by the looks of it, the EPL will always be tough but the england team will always be useless.

the reason for this is because the top clubs in england are importing players from around the world and not bringing up local talent. (aside from mufc who seem to be giving local players a go, man city and chelsea not as much). This is where its hurting them. The current ratio in the EPL is almost 70:30. with regards to foreign/local players. whereas looking at other european leagues (spain, italy, germany, etc) their ratio is like 80:20 (local/foreign). so when it comes time to pick an international team, spain/germany/etc, have options of about 6 or 7 players to pick from who will best fit that position. with england lacking local players, they only have 1 or 2 to choose from and they not good enough. its as simple as that.

if you look at the top four of each league, that pretty much makes up the national squad with a few exceptions. spain (barca, real madrid, etc), germany (bayern munich, dortmund, etc). now you look at the english top four (Man City, MUFC, arsenal, tottenham) you'll get like 4 or 5 english players at best. the rest of the players are imports.

for england team to get better, they need to start talking to the english clubs and talk to the owners to give their youth a chance. but by the looks of it this will never happen. mancini himself said that man city arent looking for youth they just plan to buy expensive players. chelsea did the same.

im not picking on man city or chelsea, im just naming them as examples to prove my point so fans dont take this personally.

And to extend this discussion, why is it so? Simply because the EPL is a more physical dominated league than others. Youngsters in the EPL will simply get their "chance" later on in their career, due to the fact that they are deemed too lightweight to be ready to play for a EPL side. The spanish league fx. does not have this problem, as this is a more technical minded league, and the physical requirements of the youngsters is simply lower!

Is this true? Yes it is, when have you last seen a young aspiring talent in EPL who would actually get a decent chance? ... Mceachran is the first who comes to my mind, at 17 he was actually at the same skill lvl he is today, and already by then far technical superior to most EPL midfielders at that time, he got loaned out because he was still regarded as lightweight - he needed to bulk up. Joe Allen is a great example of how a young (and small) player can make a break-through at a young age, and more clubs should really consider descarding the idea that young players that have not yet fully developed muscle tone cannot feature in their side just yet..

I think one big factor people never mention is a lot of the top national teams have players that play abroad from their national country. This gives them experience of different playing styles and hardens them in life having to move to a different world than what they are used to.

How many top English players play abroad!? Next to none so they don't have that same experience and intelligence that other players at the top national sides.

for english players to get noticed they need to be noticed in their own country first before moving abroad. same with any other country. like steven pienaar for everton. he was/is a brilliant south african footballer that was noticed here in SA first. this is where the problem is because no youngster is given the chance that abroad youngsters get. they start off in their homeland and get noticed by english clubs via the European competitions, etc.

torres was not always a name brand, neither was CR7 for example. my point is this, if CR7 was never given the chance as a youngster for sporting, do you think he would've been as popular as he is today? imagine for an instance that sporting was a billionaire club and a player like cr7 was on the bench because they had multi-million dollar players on field, (keep in mind that he is only 18 for purposes of my example) nobody would have known his true talent coz he will never be given the chance.

thats the problem with english football, they might have the next rooney, gerrard, george best somewhere on the bench and dont even know it purely coz they too busy spending millions trying to buy superstars.

@kingpin the reason it doesnt happen and top players dont go abroad is the lack of english quality and the rules that at least a certain amount of english players must be in your team. Forcing the top teams to hold onto any decent players that come along. Unlike the 90's when we started to get a lot of top quality coming through and looked like we could win something with Shearer and co.

Although it does take some skill to react and do a overheadkick from nowhere and score it didn't really have a goalkeeper in a good position to try and stop that goal. It's kinda like Alonso scoring from the other half of the pitch, great shot, but with no keeper to beat.